We live in a world where human beings feel so fragile and delicate that it can be hard for us to speak the truth to one another any more. We sweep offenses under the rug, where they fester until the stench is so bad we cannot ignore it any more, all in the name of trying to be nice...or respectful...or, at least, non-confrontational.
It's a world in which we have an excuse for just about everything, and we're always anxious to jump in and explain why we did something incorrectly or why we made a wrong choice or what factors were at play when we did something that we normally wouldn't have done. Anything to make someone else understand that we shouldn't be held responsible for our decisions because we didn't really make a choice...it just kind of happened. Social pressure and stress and trauma and all that, you know.
And I confess that my mannerisms have led others to believe they have to treat me this way, too. That I am somehow too fragile for correction. That I have an arsenal of excuses in my pocket, ready to launch at any perceived slight. Because I want to be perfect, and somehow, not being perfect would crush me. Nobody wants to crush me.
But you know what?
I prefer to be corrected.
I prefer to face the repercussions of the choices I make, even if I didn't feel like I was making them. Even if I felt like I was getting carried along by the waves of something I didn't ask for, there's still part of me that understands that I chose not to put my feet down and stop myself from getting carried away. There's part of me that understands that to a very great degree, the things that happen in my life happen by my own choosing. And yes, even failing to choose is a choice.
Isaiah says that God changes punishment to peace (60:17), and this is what I find is most true when someone chooses to speak truth into my life. To call me out on something. To point out the places where I am falling short or even, yes, failing.
At first, like everyone, I feel the sting. I wouldn't be human if I didn't. But when I get some time and space to actually reflect, when I have a moment when I don't feel that impulse to defend myself (and better yet, when I have a relationship where I don't feel that impulse to defend myself), what I find is that...they're right. Whatever they're calling me out on, they're absolutely right.
Most of the stuff that others would call me out on are the things I do when I'm not my best self. When I've let myself get carried away. When I'm not standing firm on the things that I know in my heart - things about me and about God and about who God made me to be. At first, I feel the sting - the sting of failure, the sting of hurt, the sting of the hurt that I have caused, but when I get a moment to actually reflect on it, when I let the critique or criticism or even consequence settle down into my heart, I usually breathe a great big sigh of relief.
Someone has dared to speak truth to me and has freed me from that little bit of the false self that had taken control. Because of their tender love, I am released once more to be simply myself, called back to the core of who I am, set free from the facade and the broken image and the things I have fallen to.
That's what God's punishment does, too. It sets us free from the false things we've created in our lives...or the things we've let be created in our lives simply by refusing to put our feet down and keep ourselves from being carried away, and it lets us settle back into the real us - the persons we were created to be, the ones we want to be, the ones we say in our hearts that we are while we're making excuses for having not been that.
A little bit of truth gives us the freedom to become those things - for real - again. With a measure of peace and rest and a great big sigh of relief that the truth really has set us free.
Oh, that we may breathe again.
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